PTO Rejects Instant Live Patent

Jivecat writes "Instant Live, a service of the concert promotion company Live Nation, makes recordings of live concerts that are rapidly burned onto CDs to be sold to the audience before they leave the venue. It's a nice service for fans, but Live Nation holds the patent for a technology that places markers between songs so they can be written as separate tracks rather than one big track — in effect giving them a monopoly on in-concert recordings. Now, thanks to the efforts of the EFF and a patent attorney, who found prior work of similar technology, the U.S. Patent Office has revoked Live Nation's patent. This is good news for those who consider Live Nation to be the Evil Empire when it comes to concert promotion."

Comments

EFF to the rescue

[vivaoporto]

Some people like to diss EFF here on Slashdot, specially when they don't win some cases, but forget to thank them for the victories that make our lives easier. To show your support and help them to help us all, shell in some cash. The digital world thanks you :)

Re:A tragedy, actually

[OverlordQ]

How hard is it to run a line off the sound board to a recording device and have some dude hit a button at the end of every song to signal 'put this as a new track'?